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Tuesday, September 6, 2011

iTunes Match

A spokesperson for Apple was keen to clarify at All Things D-shaped correction of all media - including us - with iTunes Match described as a listening service streaming. Match iTunes would use a local cache: pressing the download button triggers not playback of a song streaming pure remote, but downloading a song in AAC format 256 local pieces read as it is downloaded.
Streaming requires a constant connection to the server, the file being downloaded piece by piece. With icloud, Apple does things differently: the 256 AAC file is downloaded in its entirety in the local cache, allowing in particular, as long as the connection is good, start playing immediately and to move forward through the song without waiting for buffering. This system is also more easily deployable on a large scale: concurrent connections for streaming could bend mobile networks and degrade the user experience.
But in the end, no matter: the same way that most users do not know about Specify its elaborate system of P2P (and time of Hadopi and shortcuts coarse it entails, it is better that they know nothing about), most users do not care about the precise operation certainly not Match iTunes.
Apple is indeed everything that his system is like the hardcore streaming from the perspective of the user. While the song is downloaded in the local cache, switch to airplane mode and you cannot read it. Apple can be dispensed to provide a system for managing the size of the cache: it denies the existence of the local cache. While the song is downloaded in the local cache, it will be seen as downloaded by the system if the user has explicitly pressed the download button.
While technically there is only one step - download the song - Apple separates for the user to listen and download, to facilitate understanding of the system. Music "rises" in the cloud of your iTunes icloud automatically; you can play a song directly in the cloud or to "descend" to your iPhone or your iPhone by pressing a button. Never mind the semantic and technical discussions are certainly important for a fringe of users, but are similar to all other pinailleries - provided that the system works.